


looking pretty in the city of frame

by stitchingatthecircuitboard



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: F/F, Heist AU, M/M, Multi, batfam
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-08 07:34:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchingatthecircuitboard/pseuds/stitchingatthecircuitboard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What do you mean, <em>it's gone?!"</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. we're fabulous. in case you were wondering.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [narfiffiftic (maladictive)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maladictive/gifts).



> so, uh, it’s true that i’ve been watching way too much leverage, but this is really narfi’s fault, because she said “write the thing” so. i did. 
> 
> *jazz hands away*
> 
> {inspired by [this post](http://stitchingatthecircuitboard.tumblr.com/post/72894505378/hawk-ok-wait-a-heist-au-where-tim-plans-everything-and)}

The hand placing the glass on his desk trembles. Ra’s al Ghul pauses, pen stilling on the page. “Is there a problem, Ubu?”

Ubu coughs to clear his throat, not meeting Ra’s’ eyes. “Sir,” he says, voice fracturing even as he speaks, “the. The, uh, Head investment. It’s gone.”

There’s a blot on the paper, his pen having lingered too long. Ra’s sets it aside, every action precise and economical, and steeples his fingers. Ubu valiantly and unsuccessfully attempts to stop shaking.

“What do you mean,” Ra’s says evenly, _“it’s gone.”_

—

Alvin Draper is not his real name, because why on earth would he ever give his _real name_ to _Ra’s al Ghul_. It is, however, who he is now, so Alvin Draper slips his phone from his pocket, nods to the receptionist, who barely looks up from her computer, and types _Ready when you are._ Alvin Draper, workaholic accountant, takes one lunch off a week to eat with his brother, who is currently leaning casually against the stairwell.

“Hey,” Dick says brightly, running a bruise-knuckled hand through his hair. “How’s it hanging, Al?”

Alvin Draper doesn’t like nicknames, Alvin Draper disapproves of violence and his brother’s habit of finding a fight wherever he goes, so Alvin Draper sighs, pulls a pair of gloves from Dick’s pockets, and thrusts them at his chest. “Put these on, you idiot,” he says. “We’ll never be let into the restaurant with your hands like that, haven’t I told you _time and again_ that I can’t afford to screw this job up—”

Dick sighs, works the gloves on, and nods westward. “We good to go?”

“Ugh,” Alvin Draper says, _“fine,”_ and marches off in the direction Dick had indicated, Dick reassuringly at his side.

Anyone trying to get at Alvin Draper and the briefcase in his hand has to get past Cass and through Dick first. It’s a very comforting thought.

At the end of the block, still inside Cass’ range, there’s a familiar, unmarked van, windows tinted dark. Dick opens his mouth and Alvin Draper says, irritably, “Let me guess. You call shotgun.”

Dick grins, pulls the door open. “Always, little b.”

“—Cass,” Jason’s saying patiently from the driver’s seat. His eyes flick to the rearview mirror, a flash of a smile visible from the back seat. “Yeah, they’re here, we’re gonna meet you in half an hour, got that? No waiting around for— _Cass,_ no one is hot enough to risk incarceration for, believe me, I’ve been on the inside. Yeah, I know you would run the place in like, an hour, but trust me, _the food is not worth it,_ okay, I don’t care how cute she is.”

His phone beeps, a picture of a young blonde woman flashing on the screen. Jason glances at it. “Cass. I never said she wasn’t cute. She’s very cute. But she’s been on our tail for _months,_ Cass, and that’s not flirtation, that’s her job.”

“Jay,” Dick says, “we’re all set, let’s go.”

“Yes, Jason.” Alvin Draper unknots his tie, and Tim Drake tosses it aside, and brushes his hair behind his ears, fishing a hair tie from his pocket. _“Drive.”_

The van rumbles to life beneath them, Jason effortlessly pulling away from the curb despite the two cars bookending them. Dick sighs, loudly, something like _showoff_ rough under his breath.

“Just because you can’t fuckin’ parallel park,” Jason mutters, and then, “No, Cass, of course I trust your driving, was talkin’ to Dickiebird here.”

Tim fishes his earpiece out of the kit in the back, sticks it in his ear. “Hey, Cass,” he says. “We’re _fabulous._ In case you were wondering.”

“What I think you mean,” Cass says drily, “is we have successfully completed another mission.”

“Obviously,” he says. “Tell you more when we meet up. Thirty minutes. Don’t let the pretty detective distract you, even if she shows.”

“Brother,” Cass says seriously, as Jason takes the exit ramp onto the Gotham Bypass, “she’s pulling up right now.”

Tim freezes, hand flying to his ear to block out the traffic, sure that he misheard. _“What?!”_

“Yeah,” Cass says, and 'dreamy' was never a word Tim thought he’d apply to his sister, but it’s the only one he can think of that fits. “She’s here, and she looks pissed.”  


“Oh my god,” Tim says. “Jason! Hurry up!”  


“I’m going the _speed limit,_ baby b., like fuck am I getting a ticket because of your paranoia. We’re _fine.”_

—

On the other side of Gotham, Detective Stephanie Brown is decidedly _not_ fine. The man in front of her won’t stop shaking, no one knows anything about what happened, or if anything did in fact happen, and she can feel a splitting headache coming on. This is the _worst._

Looking at the brighter side, she can see a flash of sparkly purple every time she looks at her socks, and no matter how useless her witnesses are, at least her socks are warm, comfy, and cheerfully, loyally eggplant purple. 

Steph steals another glance, fortifying herself with purple wonderfullness, which is totally a word despite Babs’—ahem, the Captain’s—allegations to the contrary. 

“Okay,” she says, offering the witness a sunny, inviting smile. “You said the account is gone. Can you explain what you mean by that, exactly?”

“It’s— _gone,”_ Ubu says helplessly. “Like it never existed. There are no records of it anywhere in our system, and the money’s vanished into thin air—”

Her heart sinks, slowly and miserably and with absolute certainty, and Steph knows that not even violet suspenders and syrup-soaked waffles are going to save today.

“Can you tell me what account we’re talking about?”

“The.” He swallows. “The Head account.”

“And that’s…what, the main account?”

“No,” says someone coolly behind her. “That would be my daughter’s investment.”

Steph turns, tucking her pen behind her ear. “And your daughter is…?”

The man smiles, thin and humorless. “Talia al Ghul,” he says. “Although she goes by Talia Head, these days. She’s C.E.O. of LexCorp. Perhaps you’ve heard of her?”

“Oh,” Steph says intelligently. “Her.”

—

Cass shoulders her tranq gun after watching the front of the al Ghul building for eight minutes, but Stephanie Brown has yet to emerge. She’s an excellent detective, doing a thorough job. Cass tries not to be too disappointed. 

Her motorcycle’s parked in the alley behind the building she’d snuck into earlier today, and it’s easy enough to slip out the back unnoticed. If Detective Brown were checking out the building, Cass thinks it would be considerably harder, but Detective Brown is diligently working across the street. She tries not to be disappointed by that, either.

Getting to the rendez-vous is also easy, despite the level of complexity the job had required. But Tim is excellent at what he does, which is getting people to give him what he wants; and she is excellent at what she does, which is stopping people from hurting other people. Dick and Jason and Wendy are useful in their own ways. Jason, for example, has not only perfected parallel parking, but is a very good storyteller. And Wendy can get into any system she likes. Dick makes sure they make it out okay, whether that entails stopping a threat that Cass can’t or forcing them out to karaoke every free Friday night. 

She arrives a minute before they do. “See, Jay,” she says aloud, knowing he’ll hear her through the earpieces they all wear. “I can pine _and_ do my job. I am great at multitasking.”

“Like I ever doubted,” Jason says. “E.T.A. thirty seconds.”

“See you then,” Cass says, dismounting, and freezes.

A car pulls into the lot just behind her, and Cass is on her bike and about to swoop around it when the window rolls down, and Talia Head, the woman whose multimillion dollar investment they just stole, smiles at her.

“Oh,” Talia says, smiling insincerely, “please don’t go. I’d rather like to have words with you and your…family.”

“Cass,” Tim says sharply in her ear. “Get out of there, _now.”_

“Sorry, gotta dash,” Cass says, and makes to zip out of the lot when a motorcycle roars in, pulling up sharply and perpendicular to Cass’ bike. The rider faces her, the helmet’s visor shielding their face from view. 

Talia says, “I have an interesting proposition for you, you see.”

“Let me guess,” Cass says, voice blessedly steady. “You recently discovered some money missing, and you want us to find it for you.”

Talia bares her teeth in a smile. The rider laughs.

“No,” she says. “I want you to rob Bruce Wayne.”


	2. would you like to cuddle the unicorn?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “That’s true,” Jason agrees. “I do feel unappreciated, sometimes.”  
> “I feel unloved,” Cass says mournfully. “Unicorn, please.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine & mine alone.

Tim pinches the bridge of his nose. “What do you mean,” he says, “she wants us to rob _Bruce Wayne?!”_

On the couch, feet curled under Jason’s leg for warmth, Cass shrugs, holds the paisley unicorn Dick’d brought back a few years ago closer to her chest. “You were listening in, Tim. You were all listening in, actually, so…I’m not sure what’s unclear about this.”

_“Why_ does she want us to rob Wayne, though?” Dick wonders.

“I don’t know,” Cass says irritably. “She didn’t say. She _did_ say she didn’t care about the money we stole from al Ghul.”

Jason frowns, reaches over to Cass. With a put-upon sigh, she relinquishes the unicorn to him. “What she said,” he says slowly, “is that we could keep the money from the Head account. Do whatever we want with it, and she would head off the investigation on her end.”

“She doesn’t even care what happens to whatever we steal from Wayne,” Tim muses. “My guess is, she just wants him hurt.”

“You say that like we’ve agreed to take the job.” They all turn as Wendy wheels into the room, pausing at one end of the table. 

“These the hard drives?” she asks Tim, opening the briefcase and pulling one out.

“Indubitably,” he says, stretching. 

“It went okay?”

“Well, aside from the surprise at the rendez-vous,” Cass mutters. “Which I feel like I should’ve been _warned_ about, y’know? I mean, it’s my job to make sure that we get out of the immediate vicinity okay—”

Jason coughs.

“—And yours, I suppose, but Jason, you do everything, okay, ‘getaway man’ is grossly unfair to you.”

“That’s true,” Jason agrees. “I do feel unappreciated, sometimes.”

“I feel unloved,” Cass says mournfully. “Unicorn, please.”

Wendy rolls her eyes as Cass tucks her face into the crook of the unicorn’s neck. “Right. _You two_ feel unappreciated. I’ll just roll back into my tech cave while you all see the action and the credit—”

“And the scary lady bodyguards who show up when things go wrong,” Cass mutters. 

_“Whatever,”_ Wendy snaps. “Point is, there are things I can do besides listen to you moon over Detective Brown, like—like catching up on the new _Ms. Marvel_ comic or screaming incoherently on the internet about white supremacy in the Golden Globes or physical therapy. My time is _my time_ once a mission’s over, capiche?”

Cass sits up, dark eyes serious. “I’m sorry, Wendy,” she says, reaching out affectionately. “You’re right. We wouldn’t be able to do ninety percent of the things we do without you. Would you like to cuddle the unicorn?”

“Ugh,” Wendy says, but takes the unicorn. “You’re too cute for your own good.”

Tim clears his throat. “Can we—”

_“May_ we,” Dick stage-whispers from across the room.

“Okay, for someone who finds _paisley unicorns_ for us to cuddle post-mission, you’re such an ass,” Tim says irritably. _“May_ we get back to the matter at hand?”

Dick hums pensively. “I’m not sure we have too much choice,” he says slowly. “Like. Talia Head or al Ghul, whatever she’s calling herself—she’s powerful. Friends in places high and low, y’know? If we say no, we’re basically inviting arrest.”

“Yeah, for all we know, she could’ve set us up.” Jason reaches for the unicorn. “I mean, she doesn’t give a fuck about the money, at least not that we can tell. Seems reasonable to think she planned for us to get away with it.”

“A gesture of goodwill and a test, at the same time,” Wendy says, tossing it to him. “Yeah. Tactically, that makes sense, I just…don’t know how she could’ve planned for us to steal that account specifically.”

Cass straightens immediately. “Unless she’s got eyes and ears on us. Bugs. Mooks.” She waggles her brows. 

“Fuck,” Wendy mutters, pulling her tablet from the back of the wheelchair and frowning at it. “Okay. I’ll do a sweep for electronics and run through the camera feeds from the last few weeks. Dick, if I find anything—”

He bows exaggeratedly. “At your service.”

“But for the moment.” Tim presses a hand to his brow, as if he could smooth the frown away with his fingers. “Let’s please focus, guys, okay.”

“Excuse,” Cass sniffs. “Wendy and I are ladies, thank you.”

“A herd of cats, I swear,” Tim says, maybe with a thread of desperation, but fuck he’ll deny it if he can. “Ladies and gentleman and Dick, are we agreed? We’re taking the Wayne job?”  
Jason shrugs. “We stay out of prison, steal another fortune to Robin-Hood around Crime Alley? I’m in.”

Cass pulls the unicorn from his arms. “Hmm. Sure. Okay.”

Wendy waves a hand. “Yeah, should be fine, I’m just pulling up schematics and shit now, but I don’t anticipate it being more difficult than the al Ghul hack. I like not being in prison. Let’s do it.”

“Dick?” Tim asks, tilting his head. 

Dick grins, wide and sunny. “I go where the rest of you go, remember? Family.”

And—yeah, that’s what they are now, Tim realizes. Family. A weird-as-fuck family made of criminally-inclined people with surprisingly high moral standards. Dick, circus kid who took care of everyone else until Haly’s closed down for good and shunted him to foster care; Jason, street rat turned vigilante turned con man cum philanthropist; Tim, with just enough of an inheritance to invest in something as financially unsound as hope.

Cass, showing up without explanation in the planning stages of their first job with a tranq gun, a dozen knives, and a hacker extraordinaire. Wendy had taken one look at their operation, muttered _amateurs,_ and set about dazzling them all with her skill and bright pink hair.

Yeah. They’re a family, now, whatever else they are. Tim looks up, catches Jason’s eye, and glances away again. Family. Right.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s do it.”

“Great!” Wendy says drily, already wheeling around to leave. “More work. I’ll go make magic in my lab, do not disturb, et cetera.” 

“Dick, wanna come be my backup?” Cass asks, twisting around to see him. “Meet the clients?”

“What about me,” Jason says with a wounded air. “Am I being thrown over for an older man, Cassandra?”

“You’re such a dork, no,” Cass says. She leans to tug on the piebald streak in his hair. “Tim got you molasses and crystalized ginger, Jay, have fun and feed our fearless leader.”

Jason waits until they’ve all left, almost fades away into the couch. He does that, not in the supernatural sense, just—he settles, stills; you forget he’s there after a minute. It’s relaxing, oddly, like being alone but better, but that might just be Tim. Fuck knows. He opens up his laptop, starts browsing the identities he’s got and the Wayne Enterprises human resources page.

“Crystalized ginger, huh?” 

He doesn’t start, though it’s a close thing. “Yeah,” Tim says, glancing up. “Yeah, uh, Cass mentioned you make killer gingersnaps.”

Jason tilts his head.

“I mean.” Tim sits up, vaguely realizing that he could’ve phrased that slightly better. “You like baking. I thought, maybe you like making those—”

“I do,” Jason says, mercifully cutting him off. “Yeah. Okay. One batch coming up, O fearless leader.” His hand brushes Tim’s shoulder on the way to the kitchen.

Tim swallows, and bends back over his laptop. It’s a minute or two before he can put the touch from his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the unicorn cuddling thing got out of hand, i know. i just wanted cuddles and cuteness.
> 
> also, oh god, they're so weirdly out of character, i'm sorry. just, uh, blame it on the heist-au-ness???
> 
> more stephcass next chapter, i promise <3
> 
> g'night, all.


End file.
